What Belongs to You
- Author Garth Greenwell
- Narrator Garth Greenwell
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Publish Date 20 April 2017
- Run Time 6 hours and 11 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Contemporary romance, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Social issues, Sex and sexuality, social aspects.
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What to expect
Startlingly erotic and immensely powerful, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You tells an unforgettable story about the ways our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.
Winner of the Debut of the Year Award at the British Book Awards.
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize.
'A searching and compassionate meditation on the slipperiness of desire . . . as beautiful and vivid as poetry' – Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life
On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, their relationship growing increasingly intimate and unnerving.
As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he's forced to grapple with his own fraught history: his formative experiences of love, his painful rejection by family and friends, and the difficulty of growing up as a gay man in southern America in the 1990s.
'Worthy of its comparisons to James Baldwin and Alan Hollinghurst as well as Virginia Woolf and W G Sebald . . . spellbinding' – Evening Standard
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction.
A Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
Critics Review
What Belongs to You stands naturally alongside the great works of compromised sexual obsession such as Thomas Mann's Death in Venice . . . we are dealing with a writer who deserves his plaudits . . . I found myself unable to stop reading . . . Headily accomplished . . . an essential work of our time
Worthy of its comparisons to James Baldwin and Alan Hollinghurst as well as Virginia Woolf and W G Sebald . . . spellbinding . . . a novel of rejection and disgust, displacement and transcendence . . . I found myself trembling as I read it
A refreshingly slim, subdued and contemplative piece of work . . . Greenwell writes in long, consummately nuanced sentences, strung with insights and soaked in melancholy . . . What Belongs to You is an uncommonly sensitive, intelligent and poignant novel
I had thought of Hollinghurst as I read What Belongs to You, Greenwell's astonishingly assured debut novel . . . It is perhaps too soon to say precisely what Greenwell's own fictional territory will look like - but even this early on, the landscape looks too riveting to miss
A rich, important debut, an instant classic to be savored by all lovers of serious fiction because of, not despite, its subject: a gay man's endeavor to fathom his own heart
Brilliantly self-aware . . . Greenwell's novel impresses for many reasons, not least of which is how perfectly it fulfills its intentions. But it gains a different power from its uneasy atmosphere of psychic instability, of confession and penitence, of difficult forces acknowledged but barely mastered and beyond the conscious control of even this gifted novelist
With What Belongs to You American literature is richer by one masterpiece. The character Mitko is unforgettable, as all myths are. He reigns at the heart of this book, surrounded by the magic flames of desire
A powerful novel from a writer who seems destined to produce fine work in the years ahead, describing both the condition of loneliness and the insistent cravings of the flesh with precision and sensitivity.
In his spare, haunting novel, Garth Greenwell takes a well-known narrative and finds new meaning in it. What Belongs to You is a searching and compassionate meditation on the slipperiness of desire, the impossibility of salvation, and the forces of shame, guilt, and yearning that often accompany love, rendered in language as beautiful and vivid as poetry
There's a particular joy in reading Garth Greenwell, in having that feeling, precious and rare: here is the real thing
A subtle observer of human interactions. He underscores the way expressions of love are nearly always, in part, performance
Exquisite . . . Stylistically, Greenwell owes more to Sebald than to Nabokov . . . One of the great pleasures of his prose is how profoundly thoughtful it is, even when considering physical needs and passions. This is emotion recollected in tranquillity, or rather in melancholy. There is an almost visceral disjuncture between places and actions that are grubby, even squalid, and the delicacy of the lens through which they're seen. Yet the effect, paradoxically, is one of almost pure emotion
One of the few novels I've read which feels like it offers an authentic account of what growing up is like for gay people in western societies
Garth Greenwell's first novel is gilded with the kind of praise that debut writers might never dare to imagine for themselves . . . none of it is hyperbole. The praise is earned . . . first, Greenwell's abundant gifts: the language, Hanya Yanagihara says on the book sticker, is "as beautiful and vivid as poetry". To speak in such an approximation, though, might sell it short. Little here is metaphoric though no word is spare. Every utterance seems imbued with thought that is deep and beautiful in its clarity
He imbues his prose with a bewitching combination of ethereal somnolence, luminosity and brutal rumination. His sentences are carefully balanced . . . This command of form can also be felt in the larger structures of the novel: in the rhythm and tone of its paragraphs, and in the cumulative music of the book as a whole
[A novel] about the lasting damage that a loveless childhood can inflict . . . The last sequence includes some marvellous vignettes of loving kindness between parents and children, but they are presented as something that only other people can ever have, and the final pages of the book are memorable for their bleak and desperate sadness
Heartfelt . . . [A] touching, desperately sad story. And the character of Mitko, so vivid yet elusive, explains why What Belongs to You is such a promising debut
Contains both psychological depth and moments of breathtaking drama
This astonishing debut novel's portrait of compromised lust holds its own against classics like Lolita
A slender and achingly beautifully novel full of the gloriously messy pain of unrequited and inappropriate love
A truly stunning debut . . . a masterpiece . . . A literary star is born
The American book changing gay literature
A slim novel, yes, but a slim masterpiece
I was blown away by [What Belongs to You]
Exquisite . . . Risk and desire are the 'coterminous' elements of the book's style as well as its action, terms of engagement Greenwell makes plain from its first page . . . Breathtaking . . . It's hard to tell at times whether the narrator is the innocent abroad or an American abroad among innocents. Greenwell's insight is that the destruction of innocence is a process that never halts
Outstanding in just about every way a novel could be
The strength of this slim book is the vibrant, heartbreaking character Mr Greenwell creates in Mitko: object of the unnamed narrator's desire, fear, obsession and, ultimately, pity. . . Mr Greenwell offers a tender portrait of the longing for connection and acceptance that inhabits us all
Greenwell's literary criticism in the New Yorker and the Atlantic demonstrates an unusually keen and insightful mind. That promise is fully realized here in the dark magic of these pages
Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You is the Great Gay Novel for our times . . . an astonishing debut
Garth Greenwell starts 2016 on a high note with What Belongs to You, a novel that can be called truly great. The narrative follows an American teacher in Bulgaria and his relationship with a young hustler named Mitko, whom he pays for sex. But the interaction doesn't end there as you might expect, and neither does the exploration of desire, which Greenwell orchestrates brilliantly. Plumbing the depths of sexuality and psychology, What Belongs to You is lingering and haunting
What Belongs To You comes to feel, in the end, like a great enactment of an infatuation, exciting and appalling by turns-a brilliantly observed account of an attempt to make another person entirely yours, to subsume them within your story
At just about two hundred pages, What Belongs to You feels at once expansive and instantaneous, and its lyrical use of time is one of its most striking and immersive elements. In any given section, every moment of the book is present. . . the novel recalls works like Rachel Cusk's Outline, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, and Teju Cole's Open City; and, of course, it descends stylistically from Sebald . . . What Belongs to You is a haunting, gorgeous, and fierce debut, capturing desire in every sentence - holding the space of what we long for and what can never truly be ours
Garth Greenwell's debut novel What Belongs to You aches with desire and tenderness: an American professor in Bulgaria encounters a male prostitute named Mitko in a public bathroom, beginning a complex sexual relationship between the two that will have enormous ramifications for them both. Lyrical and haunting, What Belongs to You is a rumination on lust, shame, violence, and the ways in which sexual and emotional pain stays with and shapes us
Thomas Mann, Henry James and Marcel Proust are Greenwell's strongest forebears, with James Baldwin and Alan Hollinghurst as equally discernible inspirations. . .Garth Greenwell's writing is alive to the foreign and the unknown; he opens our eyes to worlds we had not realized existed alongside our own. Even the landscape of Bulgaria, one of the poorest and least-known countries in Europe, is made vivid and vibrant. . .What Belongs to You make visible all the painful and beautiful facets of human life and human love
Reaches, with elegance, with poetry, into what it means to be a human. . .I rarely feel such a connection with a book: I am sure many others will too, after reading this
[What Belongs to You is] the first great novel of 2016 . . . The book is brilliantly structured . . . [and] Greenwell's ability to parse the complex emotional push-and-pull between the two men is incredible, and rivals books like Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life or Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. His images are spot-on . . . And in Mitko, Greenwell has created one of the best characters in recent years. What Belongs to You is a great tragedy, and Greenwell is a great writer. I'll be reading whatever he writes next."
This is a project of rare discernment and beauty, and it is not to be missed. A luminous, searing exploration of desire, alienation, and the powerful tattoo of the past
There's a gorgeousness to Greenwell's prose . . . This is a heart-breaking, important piece of work, which emphasises to us all how much our lives are made (and unmade) by how our bodies collide (or don't) with the bodies of others
Slim, eloquent and emotionally wrenching, this debut novel is a superb evocation of that curious state known as love . . . Greenwell's shimmering novel recounts an age-old story with such toughness and tenderness as to make it seem new: and that is an art in itself
What Belongs To You is a very accomplished novel from an exceptionally skilled writer. It brilliantly deconstructs the expat experience, modern sexual mores, and cross-continental cultural divides, echoing one of Greenwell's go-to novels growing up, James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. Undoubtedly one of the novels of the year, Greenwell is a writer to watch
Utterly absorbing . . . powerful . . . For its mastery of tone and its expert drawing together of a number of disparate elements, Greenwell's narrative feat is utterly remarkable and the final ten pages amount to one of the most moving passages this reviewer has ever read in contemporary fiction
Great portrayal of obsession . . . it is in his prose that Greenwell displays his mastery
Masterly début . . . a melancholy but unwavering account of desire and its aetiologies . . . Mitko is one of the the most unforgettable characters in contemporary gay literature . . . Greenwell's rare invocation of desire's inexorable spell propels you right to the end
First-rate debut . . . Greenwell's entranced sentences, Sebald-like in their gravity and evocativeness, take us back to the old days
What Belongs to You is a rich and sensually detailed exploration of love and obsession. A haunting, beautiful novel
What Belongs to You is a beautiful, moving, sensual novel. It announces Garth Greenwell as one of America's most exciting young writers
In prose that is at once refined and lavish - the quiet dignity and control of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day coupled with the agonized passion and sexual tension of André Aciman's Call Me by Your Name - Garth Greenwell takes us deep inside a specific Bulgarian subculture to examine the universal: the disparity between the uninhibited lives we desire and the bearable lives we choose. I began reading What Belongs to You in admiration; I ended in tears. An exquisite debut
Garth Greenwell is a unique, and uniquely welcome, voice in American letters. The consciousness on display in his debut novel is so rich and restless that it seems practically inexhaustible: a consciousness that rises to heights of both passion and intellect - of passion harnessed by intellect. What Belongs to You very much seems to me not only a great novel but the first installment in a great body of work
I am in awe of this book. So intimate, so honest, so exquisitely crafted, it broke my heart and left me in tears. It showed me a Bulgaria both familiar and entirely novel, rendered with candor and deep affection, and characters, whose plight and desires at first seemed foreign yet, before long, so dear. Garth Greenwell has written a marvelous book, an important book - one whose impact is as much artistic as it is cultural. What Belongs to You expands not simply the world of letters, but also our collective knowledge of what it means to be human
What Belongs To You is a short novel, but Garth Greenwell's sentences are expansive and revelatory and poetic. Greenwell juxtaposes the narrator's experiences in an unprogressive, formerly Communist country still recovering its infrastructure, to the narrator's own childhood, growing up gay and closeted in the oppressive American South . . . a lovely meditation on fear and acceptance, desire and oppression, and the disparity between two cultures
Beautifully rendered, quietly obsessive. A Sebaldian account of a gay American in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the bruising experience of his sexuality being revealed to his father when he was younger
I was blown away by it . . . beautiful
Absolutely astonishing . . . a tour de force . . . remarkable
Beautifully written . . . a galvanising read as Greenwell constantly dissects his own feelings, thoughts and motives, sieving through desire and need with intelligence, insight and candour . . . Greenwell pulls off a mesmeric read . . . a finely wrought and compelling artifact of both beauty and truth.
I devoured it, in a single sitting . . . I was completely spellbound by it . . . What Belongs To You is concentrated brilliance, a short novel that packs an emotive and thought provoking punch. I urge you all to read it
The literary sensation . . . a brilliant tale of gay desire and class division that is exquisitely phrased
What Belongs To You is an exquisite triptych
An astonishing portrait of compromised lust, set in ex-Soviet Sofia, this debut novel holds its own against classics such as Lolita
I sat down to read a chapter of What Belongs to You one afternoon and ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting, hunched over my kitchen table until dark. Garth Greenwell's devastatingly beautiful novel about a gay American expat in Bulgaria and his on-again, off-again relationship with a sex worker named Mitko has been one of the year's breakout hits, and for good reason. It's a virtuosic, tender exploration of loneliness and desire, with sentences so breathtaking you'll find yourself returning to them over and over again
I read this book when it first emerged and I will keep reading it every year of my life. It is a secular desire bible. It is desire alive.
The book I wish I’d written? Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You. It does in its few perfect pages everything – absolutely everything – that I aspire to do with words.
Garth Greenwell’s book has the power and infinite beauty of an ancient tragedy: on every page, passion, obsession, and the struggle for freedom collide with the inevitability of fate and the violence of society. At the same time, it’s a radically contemporary novel, which overwhelmed me as much with its language – rhythmic, incantatory, visceral – as with the way it takes the subjects of memory, escape, desire, and melancholy, and makes them new. What Belongs to You is an essential book.
A spare, spellbinding account . . . written in gorgeously limpid prose . . . fearless and nerve-racking autobiographical fiction, incandescent with yearning, rage and rejection . . . one of the most heartbreaking accounts of pained desire that I can remember reading . . . worthy of its comparisons to James Baldwin and Alan Hollinghurst as well as Virginia Woolf and WG Sebald
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